


Smiling With Teeth

by Bibble



Category: SF9 (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11934945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibble/pseuds/Bibble
Summary: Rowoon is out trying to get some work done when he's distracted by a pretty girl. Circumstances, however, seem to be against them when they part with no way to meet each other again. Will they find a way to come back together and explore their possible relationship?? Almost certainly because this is basically just fluff and self-indulgence. I hope you enjoy.





	1. Chapter 1

Author's note: Hi, I am a 19 year old asexual woman who has very little clue about romance but I enjoyed writing this so I hope you can enjoy reading it.

Also, I enjoy designing the exact outfits my characters are wearing so whenever Tamsin is wearing a different outfit, there will be a Polyvore link in the note of that chapter. Feel free to ignore it. Here is this chapter's: [Tamsin's first outfit](https://www.polyvore.com/rw/set?id=223182502)

* * *

 

He found himself staring.

It wasn’t entirely his fault.

There were two factors in his brain working against him.

  1. The part of his brain which was incredibly aware of the desperate situation he was in wouldn’t let him look away, trying to persuade him to finally do something.
  2. There was so much to look at.



If only he had started this essay, which had been set a week ago, before today, the final day before deadline. It was in for midnight.

Everything would have been fine, he convinced himself, if not for the fact the dorm wifi had cut out just as he was about to start the essay sitting in the dorm, meaning he couldn’t access the site he had been told to write the essay on. Even then, everything would have been fine had the power to the dorm not gone out overnight so that while his laptop was plugged in, it was doing nothing useful. Even then, everything would have been fine if it had not been the final week before the January exam period at the local university, meaning that the only 24-hour café nearby with free wifi was packed to the brim.

In conclusion, the universe was working against him.

He was trying to focus on the essay but the flashing battery symbol in the corner of his screen was like a magnet to his eyes. Once he had glanced at that, his eyes were drawn to the solution. There was a single free outlet in the whole room.

This single free outlet, the only solution he could find to his problem, happened to be next to a table with a young woman focussed entirely on typing on her laptop, which was plugged into the outlet next to the one that presented Rowoon’s salvation. She had books splayed over the entire table in front of her and she occasionally picked one up to flick through before returning it to the table and once again typing furiously on her laptop.

Her back was to him so he couldn’t see her face, or what she was doing on the laptop beyond killing the keyboard with harsh strokes. The jacket draped over the back of the chair was a shade of green only a little brighter than the left half of her hair. The right half of her hair was a pastel purple in a similar brightness to the green half, making the odd colour combination match in a weird way.

He closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head.

This was no time to be contemplating the hair of a girl he had never even met. This essay needed to get done, and soon. Youngbin would kill him if he didn’t get it done in time, and to be honest, he would be mad enough at himself, knowing it would reflect badly on the whole of Neoz.  

Everyone else had finished theirs days ago. Somehow, even Dawon, king of procrastination, had done his. Rowoon felt bad for being the last one but in his defence, he had thought it was in for the next week. This meant he had prioritised practising his singing for the monthly assessment, which was in three days. He had just thought everyone else was being eager, getting theirs done early. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that it made sense that they would discuss the essays at the review.

The girl started fiddling with her hair, which was half pulled up in two buns, one purple, one green, black roots showing through in between. There was a piece on the right-hand side which seemed to be defying gravity, sticking out horizontally from her head. It was only small. There was very little chance he would have noticed it, had she not been absent-mindedly  trying to get it to lay flat.

He ran a hand down his face.

Essay!

He needed to get it done. Like most people, he hated writing about himself. So, this was the worst. He had been set the task of writing five thousand words on who he was as a person. All he had so far was nearly a thousand words on how he liked sports. And he was stuck.

Suddenly, his laptop let out a sad noise, the flashing battery symbol was now flashing red with an exclamation mark over it. Then came an alert sound, accompanied by a pop-up telling him he should think about plugging his laptop in soon. As if it hadn’t been all he had been thinking about for the whole hour since he had arrived at the café.

Rowoon decided to wait another five minutes, hoping someone would finish their work and go home in that time so that he could take their spot and their outlet, before he went to beg the girl to let him use the outlet at her table.

Looking back at his essay, he started writing his tenth consecutive sentence saying essentially the same thing; he likes soccer.

Then, only a minute or two later, when he had moved on to talking about baseball, another pop-up appeared on his screen. This one was more forceful, telling him that his battery was critically low and he needed to plug his laptop in immediately.

A stream of curses filling his head, he scoured the room one last time for a clear space with an outlet. When his eyes didn’t find what he was hoping for, he gathered his things to move.

Due to the café being so ridiculously full, to get to her table, it was impossible to walk in a straight line. He had to walk a long way around, still having to squeeze past tables on the easiest path. The route he took meant that he was now approaching her from the front. He saw her face for the first time as she sat, brow furrowed, concentrating hard on what was on her screen. The main thing that stood out to him was that she was not Korean. She wasn’t even Asian. Her skin was pale and her features Western looking.

Korean or not, however, he still needed her to share her table. He did worry that she might not speak Korean, but hoped she did, at least enough to get by.

Approaching her slowly, waiting for an opportunity to speak to her without interrupting too much, he grabbed his moment when she took a sip out of her mug of what he assumed was coffee to get her through a long night of studying.

“Excuse me,” he said, making her jump. He realised why when he saw her reach to remove her headphones from her ears. She wouldn’t have heard him coming if she was listening to music.

As she removed her headphones, she looked up at him, a confused expression on her face.

He worried her confusion was because she didn’t understand what he had said, so when he spoke again, he spoke really quite slowly. “Is it alright if I sit here? I need to charge my laptop.” He pointed to the free outlet next to where her laptop was plugged in and pointed to his own laptop, trying to make it clear what he wanted, even if she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Then, almost the worst thing he could have imagined happened.

She replied, in perfect, unbroken, almost unaccented Korean, “Oh, of course. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just move my books, one second.”

He was mortified.

She must just not have heard what he said at first.

What must she think? He could only assume she thought he was racist and had decided because she was foreign she would be unable to speak Korean. Then he thought of something worse, what if she just thought he was really slow?

Feeling lucky that she had turned away briefly to tidy her things, he ran one of his hands, cold from holding his iced coffee drink, over his face to remove at least some of the flush that had risen to his cheeks.

Once she had cleared a space for him, she looked up at him and smiled. He noticed her nose was pierced, two crossed over hoops going through the left-hand side, and she was wearing dark-ish nude lipstick with dark eyeliner making her green eyes pop even more than they already did in an area where almost everyone had brown. As if eyes weren’t already one of the most noticeable things about her, she was also wearing a white crop top covered in drawings of eyes.

As he took his seat opposite her, plugging his laptop in and receiving a happy ‘bing’ from the tired machine in response, he stared once again at his horribly written essay. She must have noticed he was more than a little stressed, because she said, “Last week of university kicking your butt too?” It took him a second to understand what she had said because it was a very informal sentence, but she was using honorifics, presumably to make sure she didn’t offend him. From looking at her, he found it likely that she was younger than him. She barely even looked old enough to be at university. It didn’t help that she was kind of tiny. He could imagine, if she stood up, she would be maybe 162cm, which was ridiculously small next to his 189cm. As if reading his mind, she added, “How old are you, by the way?”

“Something like that,” he told her. “I have an essay that’s kicking my butt. And I’m 19.”

“So you’re in second year then?” she asked.

He shook his head, noting her confused expression returning. “I don’t go to university. I’m a trainee.”

“Training to be what?” Despite her ferocity in working earlier, she seemed to have lost all interest in what she was doing. She just wanted to talk to him. He couldn’t blame her really, she had been here already when he had arrived, and already looked pretty settled in. He guessed she had been working for at least two hours already, possibly more.

“To be an idol,” he told her. It wasn’t something he often had to clarify, but he assumed the music system wherever she was from wasn’t anything like theirs.

It didn’t take her even a second to respond, “You have to write essays for that?” looking confused once again.

Starting to open his mouth, he didn’t manage to even get a sound out before she spoke again.

 “Sorry, of course you do, you’re writing one now.” She spoke quickly, having realised that she had been borderline rude and might have insulted him without meaning to.

Chuckling slightly at her flustered look, he told her, “We don’t normally. This is the first time. I have to write about myself and it’s painful.”

Once again, she responded without thinking first. “Really? Because I’ve known you all of a minute and I could write about you for hours.” The last word was barely out of her mouth before she clamped a hand over her traitorous lips, looking horrified at what had fallen out of them. “I am so sorry,” she told him. “This is why I don’t normally drink coffee but I needed to stay awake to get this done.”

He let out a full laugh this time. Smile still pulling at his lips as he asked, “What is it you’re doing?”

Face bright red and hands still covering her mouth, reminding him a little of Hwiyoung, she told him, “Just an essay, like you. Sadly, I haven’t had time until now to do it because all of my lecturers have set me work this week. I have already done five other essays just this week. It’s like lecturers forget you don’t only take their module.” She paused, final pulling her hands away from her mouth. “Sorry, too much information, right? It’s the coffee. I’m not normally this talkative.”

Laughing again, despite feeling a little guilty for complaining about the only assignment he had been set this week to someone who had been buried under so much work, he said, “Don’t worry about it. I needed cheering up so I could focus better on this. I have to finish it by midnight and still have no idea what I’m going to write.”

“My deadline is midnight too!” she blurted out. Then she said, calmer, “Unimportant, sorry again. I’m going to shut up now.”

They both got back to work, her kicking herself for her mouth running away with her and him smiling about the very same thing. He glanced up at her one last time, her face hidden behind her laptop which he now noticed was covered with a case decorated with watercolour flowers. It was much prettier than his boring black protective case. A Neoz sticker was the closest his laptop got to decoration. He started typing again, a thought in the back of his mind to find more stickers for his laptop case.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little explanation: stuff being said in English is in italics.

About an hour later, coming up to 10pm, 2 hours to the deadline, something dawned on Rowoon. He didn’t know the girl’s name. Or how old she was for that matter. He knew she must be younger than him because she was still using honorifics with him, knowing his age. At the time he was talking to her, he hadn’t even thought about telling his name or finding out hers.

He spoke as he looked up, “By the way…” He stopped as his eye met hers. She had been looking at him too and had started speaking at the same time.

After he indicated for her to speak first, she said, “I’m sorry, but I just realised I don’t know your name.” When he once again laughed, this time less at her and more at the fact they had had the same thought at the same time, she added, “And you don’t know mine, oops. I’m Tamsin.”

She held her hand out over the top of both of their laptops for him to shake and, somehow, he managed to stop laughing to take it. As his hand engulfed the tiny hand offered, it feeling like an ice cube against his palm, he couldn’t help the smile that was drawn to his face for the millionth time since meeting Tamsin only an hour before.

“I’m Kim Seokwoo, but people call me Rowoon.” He hesitated slightly before continuing, “Your hand is cold, do you want another hot drink? Maybe not coffee this time…”

She shook her head. “I’ll get one myself.”

He mimicked her shaking of her head, amplifying it slightly for effect, “You’re letting me share your table, I can get you a drink. If you don’t tell me what you want, I’ll guess. Either way I’m getting you a drink.”

Blushing, she conceded, “Hot chocolate please.”

Nodding quickly, he turned and walked to the counter before she tried to stop him.

When he returned with the most ridiculous hot chocolate, piled high with whipped cream and marshmallows, Tamsin didn’t know what to do with herself. She hadn’t wanted him to buy her anything but this was beyond what she could deal with.

“Please let me pay for this,” she said as he handed the huge drink to her.

“No,” he said, bluntly.

“Please,” she whined. “I feel bad.”

“Don’t,” he told her. “Finish your essay on time to thank me.”

She didn’t say anything in response to that, instead getting straight back into working on the essay.

The two fell back into a comfortable silence.

Ever since he had come to sit with Tamsin, the words had been flowing out of Rowoon much easier. He was sure it had something to do with not having to worry about the charge of his laptop, but also thought it was at least partly because he was happy. Somehow this girl he didn’t even know was making him smile more than anyone he did.

Roughly two hours later, 11.54pm, Rowoon finally submitted the essay to the site, receiving a thank you screen in response which told him all of the essays had now been received. He leant back in his seat, stretching slightly, relaxing. The relaxation only lasted a couple of seconds until Tamsin made him jump by hissing, “ _Yes_!”

“What?” he exclaimed, sitting up straight, his voice betraying his surprise.

Tamsin blushed, “Sorry,” she started, making him wonder how many times she had apologised to him already in the short time they had been sitting together. “I just sent off my essay, just in time.”

Again, he laughed a little. “Well done. I just sent mine off too.” Then something dawned on him. If they were both finished, they would both go home and probably never see each other again. He didn’t want that. Here he was presented with a lovely, bubbly, foreign girl who made him laugh with every second sentence, he couldn’t just let her walk away. “So…” he started, planning in his head as he spoke. “Do you want to go do something to celebrate?”

Looking down for a second, Tamsin considered the invitation. She had been planning to head straight home after she had finished her essay so that she could sleep for as long as possible before she had to get up early the next day to continue revising for the coming exams. However, she didn’t think she could use that as an excuse when a gorgeous giant was sitting across from her asking her out for a drink. His smile was to die for and, as he sent her one just then, all thoughts of saying no disappeared.

“What did you have in mind?” she found her mouth saying before her brain had fully committed to the plan. For once, she didn’t curse herself or her coffee for it, perfectly aware of the fact that if she had thought about it too much she would have talked herself out of saying yes.

“There’s a bar nearby…” he trailed off, looking for her approval.

She bit her lip, wondering what to say. The legal drinking age was 19. Rowoon had told her that he was 19 but due to the custom in Korea, that meant he was what she would call 18; meaning he couldn’t drink either. It seemed safe to agree because as they were both underage he probably wouldn’t want to risk getting in trouble.

When she didn’t reply for a few seconds while she was thinking this through, Rowoon added, “I don’t think anywhere else around here would be open and I think we both are ready to get out of here. The only other option would be going back to my dorm but that would involve you meeting my members. There are 9 of us and I don’t think it’s fair to subject anyone to that on a first…” he caught himself back from almost saying date. This was not a date. He had just met her. This was a time where he could get her number to maybe ask her on an actual date. “Meeting,” he finished instead.

She reached up again to flatten the defiant piece of hair sticking out from her head as she replied, “The bar sounds good.”

The two of them packed their things, Tamsin taking a little longer than Rowoon because of all of the books that she had been using as reference materials.

As she stood up, he realised that he had overestimated her height before. She was a good 5 or 6 centimetres smaller than the 162cm he had estimated. She was more than a foot smaller than him and he thought it was adorable. Looking down at her, once again he found a smile pulling at his mouth.

Putting her bag over her shoulder, she inadvertently showed it off to Rowoon, even though it took him a second to notice it due to the distraction of her bright rainbow striped over the knee socks. He thought the bag was weird. There were cartoon drawings of a rock and a piece of sushi on a background a similar colour to her jacket and it said, “Rock & Roll” on it. While trying to figure that out, he noticed that it was almost full to bursting with the notes and text books she had been using for her work. He felt bad for adding to her time having to carry it so as they walked side by side from the café, he said, “I’ll carry your bag for you.” He only had a small laptop bag so carrying her bag as well wouldn’t be too much of a bother for him.

Blushing again, she shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, hiking the bag further onto her shoulder. But he held his hand out anyway, waiting for her to give it to him. “Really, don’t worry about it,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

He just made a beckoning motion, indicating for her to give it to him.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

Simply shaking his head, Rowoon motioned again for her to give him the bag.

Sighing, she finally handed it over, reluctantly. She almost laughed at how small the bag looked against the giant next to her. The weight of the bag had pulled the strap out to the longest it could be, which, on Tamsin, meant that it fell to about level with her knees, making it really uncomfortable to carry. On Rowoon, however, the length was about right, the bag falling to around his hips.

“It’s this way,” he said, leading her around a corner to the left of the café. “So, why are you in Korea?” he asked. Backtracking a little, he said, “If you don’t mind me asking. And do your family live here?”

She looked away from him before answering, instead looking at the closed shops lining the street they were walking on as she spoke, “I came here for university. My family are still back in England, where I’m from.” There were reasons behind the move from England that she was not going to get into with him any time soon. Only one person in Korea knew the whole story, and only two people in the whole world.

“Why Korea?” he asked, unaware of the type of thoughts he had brought up in her head. “And how did you learn Korean? You’re very good.”

Despite the thoughts, which she now tried to put to the side, she found herself smiling, both at the compliment and his interest in her. “I studied Korean while I was at school, doing a GCSE and an A level in it. It’s a beautiful language. It’s the only character based language I know so far.”

“Are you planning to learn more? What other languages do you know?” Rowoon was aware that he was probably asking too many questions, but they had been piling up in his mind as he sat opposite her while they worked. He was intrigued by her. There weren’t many non-Koreans in universities there, especially not English people. The Korean school system was on a different level to the English one so student wouldn’t normally want to come there and even if they did, they would usual fall short of the academic requirements.

“I hope to learn more, yeah,” she told him. “I think languages are really cool and I always want to learn more. The thing stopping me right now is that I am trying to really master the ones I am studying currently. Especially as I have to work too, meaning I don’t have much extra free time. I’m not complaining, though, I love the challenge the university here presents me. And as for languages I speak, there’s English, obviously, and Korean, then there’s Russian and German, I’m almost fluent in French, although I am still struggling with pronunciation, so I am much better in writing than out loud. I also know a little Spanish, but not much.”

They turned a corner before Rowoon started to reply, well, Rowoon turned the corner. Tamsin didn’t realise he was turning and ended up walking into him.

“Ah, shibal,” she swore as she bumped her nose against his rather firm chest.

Again, he couldn’t help the smile that was drawn to his face as he looked down at the tiny girl swearing and rubbing her nose, crinkling it up as she did.

“Sorry,” she told him. “My awareness of my surroundings is severely lacking. So is my self-awareness to be honest. Who knows what I am actually aware of?” She shrugged, exasperated by herself.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, smile seemingly perpetually lighting up his features. “I find it endearing.”

Having thought she was immune to flirting due to her experiences back home and her friendship with her flatmate Seong-Min who was lovingly referred to as Grease Machine or Grease-Min, she was surprised how much she had blushed since meeting Rowoon those few hours before.

Saving her from having to come up with a reply while she was so flustered, they arrived at their destination, Rowoon announcing it by saying, “Here we are,” and motioning for her to enter before him as he held the door open for her.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The bar was unsurprisingly really quite full, what with it being a Saturday night. Tamsin found herself a little jealous of all of the people there, happily enjoying their weekend without thoughts of assignment grades and impending exams. Then she remembered that she was there too, and with a gorgeous guy, and should be enjoying even this short bit of her weekend without thoughts of assignment grades and impending exams. Putting those thoughts out of her mind, she followed Rowoon who had closed the door behind them and was making his way to the bar.

When the bartender greeted Rowoon with a nod and the question, “What can I get you?” Rowoon turned and looked at Tamsin, awaiting her response to the question.

“A lemonade, please,” she told him.

He ordered two of the same and then looked around for a place for them to sit as the bartender poured their drinks. Tamsin looked too, but by the time their drinks were ready and Rowoon had paid for them, turning down the cash Tamsin had tried to hand him in payment, the two of them had both reached the conclusion that the only free spot was one at the bar where two high seats sat relatively close together on the end of the bar.

Rowoon grabbed both drinks and carried them over to what was now apparently their spot for the night. He tucked both of their bags in front of his chair before taking a seat with ease despite the height of the chair. Not having such an easy time, Tamsin took her jacket off and placed it on the back of the stool. It was relatively warm in the bar due to the sheer number of bodies in there and she was going to be using some serious energy just then, so didn’t want to be too warm. She took her phone out of her pocket, turning it on as she placed it on the bar. It vibrated to let her know that something had happened while it was turned off, she decided it was probably just the group chat for her flatmates and she could check it later. Then she turned to tackle the chair problem.

After finally awkwardly clambering her way up onto the stool, she looked across to reach for her drink, only to see that it was rather a long way away due to the fact her stool was really too far away from the bar to be useful. With a sigh, she was about to climb back down to move the stool in and try again, when she heard an odd sound from Rowoon. She had almost forgotten him, sitting there and watching her struggle. He had his hand clamped over a wide smile and was clearly suppressing laughter. She couldn’t believe he had just seen her do that.

“I’d like to see you do better with a seat as tall as you,” she grumbled, pouting a little that he was laughing at her.

After taking a deep breath, he calmed down enough to be able to say, “Sorry, you’re just so small!” motioning towards the length of her body as he did.

“Agari dakcho,” she swore. “You know, I thought I’d get less shit for being short in Korea because you guys are a country known for having relatively short people, in comparison to the UK at least, but the world has clearly decided to shit on me some more by presenting me with you.”

Despite her harsh words, he could tell that she was just joking, she wasn’t actually mad. Still, he stood up from his chair, making her scoff a little at the ease with which he did it, and said, “Let me make it up to you.” Then he moved closer to her, stepped up to right beside her chair, her eyes on his the whole time, wondering what on earth he was doing. Then he picked up her chair, with her on it, making her loose eye contact for a second as she was surprised slightly off balance. He moved the chair next to the bar, putting her in a much better position, but he also moved it further along the bar, making it considerably closer to his own, which he retook then. When he sat back down, there was only a hair’s width between their legs.

She was staring at his face once again, back on balance now all four legs of the chair were safely on the floor. As she was looking at him, she was wondering, despite her previous words, how lucky she must have been to meet someone like him. He looked like, well, an idol, and was kind and funny too. This was insane. People don’t just happen to meet gorgeous trainee idols in a café while finishing a last-minute essay.

Brought out of her thoughts by him taking a drink out of his glass, she realised she hadn’t reached for hers yet, the full glass sitting mostly in front of Rowoon. Even the little way she had to lean over to reach the glass was enough to make their legs touch, surprising her a little, bringing once more a little red to her cheeks.

After taking a sip of the drink he had kindly bought her, she asked, “So, what does training to be an idol involve?” partly just because she wanted to restart the conversation again to draw attention away from the fact she had been staring at his beautiful face for more than a little too long.

For the first time since the first comment he had made to her, she saw a tired look in his eyes. “A lot of work,” he told her. “We have to be able to sing and compose, dance and choreograph, and act, all to a high standard and we have a review each month with the CEO of the company and all the teachers we have to check up on our progress.”

“And you have to write essays on top of all that apparently.”

The smile returned to his face at her comment. “Only once so far, but yes, and write essays.”

“Why did you have to write so much about yourself?” she asked, pity in her voice making it clear it was something she hated as much as he did. “Five thousand words is considerably longer than the essay I had to write to get into the university, and that’s the longest thing I’ve ever written about myself.”

With a slight shrug, he told her, “The CEO doesn’t tell us a lot. All we were told was to write five thousand words on who we were.”

The pity was showing through her eyes now as she half complained, “I hate general essay questions. For one of the ones I had to do this week we were just given the title ‘Culture’ and told to interpret that how we will. I didn’t even know which culture they meant. Korean? English? Russian? Who knows? No clue. And I used to get worse ones in Latin at school.”

He sent her a confused look. “You wrote essays in Latin? You know Latin?”

“No and yes,” she said, slightly cursing herself for mentioning Latin. She loved it so it came into her head a lot but whenever she mentioned it, people always thought it was weird that she had spent so much of her time learning it. It had been one of her favourite subjects at school, though. She liked that they studied literature almost the same as in English. “We didn’t write essays in Latin, but we wrote in English analyses of the Latin texts we were studying.”

Rowoon’s mouth dropped open as she spoke. “I complain about having to write an essay about myself when you write studies of literature in a dead language as well as speaking fluent Korean as a second language and a million other languages too. Are you some kind of genius?”

Shaking her head wildly as a blush formed again on her cheeks, she said, “No, just…” she paused, trying to think of a way to explain it. “Languages are just my thing. I find them easy to learn. I was never top of any class other than languages. And I don’t do Latin anymore. The university here doesn’t have a Classics course.”

He shook his head in disbelief at her minimising the incredible thing she could do. “So is it languages you’re studying then?” he asked.

She realised that she had never told him what she was doing at the university, or even told him that the essay she had been writing while he was sitting right opposite her was an in depth analysis of the book Anna Karenina in the original Russian and the essay had to be written in Korean. “Yes. I’m studying languages,” she confirmed.

“But don’t they teach the languages from Korean, not English?” he looked so confused, trying to get his head around how she would learn like that.

Smiling, she told him, “Yes, I have a two-stage translation process I have to work in my head. It’s a challenge, but it’s really interesting.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again when her phone, still in the same place on the bar she had left it before her ascent to the chair, which had vibrated several times since she left it there, ignored every time, started playing a song he didn’t recognise. It was a cheery song and sounded like it was in English but he could barely pick out any words he understood.

Unlike him, Tamsin obviously recognised the song, it was her phone after all. She had set it as her ringtone before she left the UK. One of the people she had hung out with at school used to say that Bowling for Soup were a one hit wonder so it had become a running joke that she took every opportunity to show the wealth of incredible songs in their discography. This one was called I Gotchoo and was mostly made up of nonsense sentences.

The ringing surprised her as well, though. People barely ever called her and if they did, it was normally a Skype call, which did not use the same ringtone. She hadn’t heard her ringtone since she had come to Korea. If she had, she would have changed it, which she made a mental note to do as she checked the call ID.

It was her flatmate, Ji-Hye, the oldest of the group. She couldn’t ignore her, that would be incredibly rude. But she didn’t want to be rude to Rowoon either.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “I have to get this, one second.”

He nodded, not offended at all.

“Annyeong,” she said into the phone, slight irritation showing through in her tone.

“Where are you?” Ji-Hye asked on the other end of the line, ignoring the tone.

Tamsin sighed, knowing this was bound to lead to a favour. “I’m at a bar near the café. Why?”

“I need you to come back,” Ji-Hye said bluntly.

Rolling her eyes, she figured her flatmate had done what she so often did and needed her to come to the rescue, but she really didn’t want to be Super Tamsin tonight. She wanted to be a girl getting to know a guy she might like. “Did you lock yourself out of the flat again? Where are the others?”

“Dae had a game tonight, remember? And Ye-Jun and Jeong went to support him so they will have all gone out afterwards, especially because I’m pretty sure I heard that they won. God knows where Grease-Min is. Bottom line: I need you to come back.”

Turning away from Rowoon and lowering her voice, Tamsin pleaded with her eonnie, “Can’t you stick it out in the hallway until the others get back?”

“That’s the thing…” Ji-Hye started, trailing off a little before continuing, “I’m not in the hallway. I was taking the rubbish out and I got all the way out to the bins before I realised I didn’t have my key.”

That was not good.

Even though they had only known each other for less than a year, since Tamsin had moved to Korea, they had gotten quite close. Living in close quarters as they did, they got to know each other’s habits. For example, Tamsin knew that Ji-Hye thought that the temperature the rest of them liked the flat at was a little too warm. This meant that when she got home, she always got changed into some tiny shorts and a sweatshirt to be comfortable. She also knew that she might have grabbed a cardigan to go outside if they were lucky. Ji-Hye didn’t see something as simple as going outside as a reason to put some proper trousers on. And it was January.

If someone didn’t let her in soon, she would freeze. It was coming up to 1am which meant that there were probably several hours before the guys would be back. As much as she didn’t want it to be the truth, Tamsin had to go and save her friend.

“I’m coming,” she said, “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” Realistically she was a 30 minute walk from the flat, but she wasn’t going to be walking, she was planning to run.

Slipping down from the stool, she said, “I’m so sorry but I have to go.” She bent down and picked up her bag, knocking into Rowoon’s leg as she did. “My roommate is locked out of our building. She’s going to freeze outside. I have to go and let her in. Sorry.” And then she was gone, out the door in a few seconds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is very much a filler chapter. I am sorry. The next chapter will be up soon and has more substance.

As she ran, she held her bag in her arms because if she let it hang from her shoulder as it should, it would bang against her legs and probably trip her as she ran. Sport was not her strong suit but she was really worried about Ji-Hye. She had no idea how long the older girl had been outside already and wanted to get her inside as fast as possible and some hot tea in her.

Rowoon tried to follow her but by the time he had reacted to her leaving, bent down to grab his bag, picked up the book that had fallen out of her bag without her noticing, when he made it out the door, she was nowhere to be seen.

In the street, looking around to see where she could possibly have gone but lost due to the fact he didn’t have any clue where she lived, he realised that he had no way to contact her. He didn’t even know her surname.

Despite the fact that they had only spent a few hours together, he had really started to like the English girl. She was sweet and she made him laugh. He didn’t want this to be both the first and the last time he saw her. While they had been talking, he had found himself wondering what the other members would think of her. How much Dawon would make her laugh, how well she would get along with Hwiyoung, how Chani would act like he hated her because she was too cute, but he would actually like her for the same reason.

Also in the back of his mind all night, he had been planning how to ask for her number, waiting for the perfect moment. He had a back-up plan to ask as they said goodbye, maybe with a comment about being able to contact her if he needed to share an outlet again.

As Tamsin reached her flat building, she spotted her unnie in the doorway, huddling with her arms wrapped around herself. “Unnie, honestly! You need to stop doing this!” she shouted at Ji-Hye.

“I know…” she replied, voice slightly shaky, as Tamsin unlocked the front door of the building and shoved her freezing flatmate inside.

Tamsin grabbed her unnie’s arm and pulled her with her up the stairs to their flat. They had to pause on the third floor because Ji-Hye’s legs were too cold to be spurred into action, but when they finally reached their flat on the fifth floor, she happily collapsed on the sofa, gratefully receiving the blanket that Tamsin lay over her.

Hurrying to the kitchen, Tamsin immediately boiled the kettle and made a warm mug of tea for Ji-Hye, wanting to warm her up from the inside out. As she handed the tea to Ji-Hye, her unnie thanked her with a voice finally starting to become more steady, then promptly sneezed.

The only reason the tea wasn’t spilled was that Tamsin had not removed her hands from the mug yet.

Looking slightly sheepish, Ji-Hye took the mug from her flatmate and cuddled it to her chest, enjoying the warmth even just holding the mug provided.

It wasn’t until she was back in the kitchen, making some soup for Ji-Hye to hopefully warm up the older woman that extra bit enough to stop her from coming down with anything too seriously, that it hit her; she would probably never see Rowoon again. Until he debuted anyway. She didn’t know how long that would take. She could imagine in a couple of years’ time turning on the tv and seeing him there on M Countdown or something and thinking of the time she met him. She didn’t like thinking like that. She didn’t like thinking of him like she thought of the idols she liked. As much as she loved her EXO bias D.O., she almost struggled to think of him as a real person. Even when she had met him at a fanmeet, he was this distant being, seemingly too special, too perfect to be too close to. There was no way she could imagine sitting in a bar and having a conversation with him like she had done with Rowoon an hour or so earlier.

Wishing desperately that she had thought to leave a note with her number before she ran out of the bar, she handed the soup to Ji-Hye.

“Are you okay?” the elder asked her. 

With a sad little laugh, Tamsin replied, “Of course, it’s me who should be worried about you, not the other way around when you do silly things like this.” She didn’t want to tell Ji-Hye about why she was sad. She probably already felt incredibly guilty for dragging the youngest of their group back home on a night when she was supposed to be able to shut off and get some work done, she didn’t need the guilt of having taken her away from a potential flirtation as well.

Half an hour later, Tamsin put her unnie to bed in their shared room, and finally got a chance to just sit down for the first time since she finished her essay. She checked her phone, expecting not to see very much, especially because she knew the guys were all out that night and would therefore probably have better things to do than message the group chat. When she looked, however, she saw that the group chat was not exactly empty, 16 new messages. They were all from Ji-Hye and all along the lines of, I locked myself out and need someone to come back and let me in, it’s cold out here. Looking at the times of the messages, Tamsin discovered that it was no wonder Ji-Hye seemed to have a bit of a cold already. She had been out in the cold over an hour by the time she had called Tamsin, and it had been nearly half an hour after that that they actually got inside.

Shaking her head, she messaged Ji-Min, Ji-Hye’s younger sister, complaining that she had to look after her family members. Ji-Min commented that it should be Ji-Hye’s job looking after Tamsin because of their ages. The two girls joked about that briefly before Ji-Min checked that Tamsin was putting Ji-Hye to bed and then getting some sleep herself.

Ji-Min was cool. Tamsin had come home from her second day of university to find her on the sofa watching tv with Ji-Hye. Having been introduced then, the three of them hung out relatively often. Ji-Min was often very busy with work or even out of the country. She was an idol in a band called AOA, but Tamsin always found herself forgetting that because she was so normal to spend time with. They went to movies and went shopping just like anyone else. She contemplated telling Ji-Min about Rowoon, maybe they even knew each other, but she decided against it as she didn’t want Ji-Hye to know and didn’t want to make a sister keep a secret from another sister.

That reminded Tamsin that she should call her own sister. It had been a few weeks since she last did. It was coming up to 3am so it was actually a pretty good time to do so, being 7pm in the UK, but she was too tired. Instead, she made a mental note to find another time to do it and headed to bed, changing in the bathroom so as not to make too much noise in the bedroom while Ji-Hye was trying to sleep.

Lying in bed, trying to sleep, Tamsin’s brain would not let her forget Rowoon. About an hour of restlessness later, she was genuinely contemplating walking all the way back to the bar to see if by some tiny chance, he had stayed this long and was still there. She didn’t hold out much hope, but thought it might make her brain satisfied enough to shut up for the night. So much for getting up early to revise.

She was drawn out of her thoughts of venturing back out into the cold by the sound of the flat door opening, and not very quietly. This was soon followed by raucous giggling.

Creeping out of their room with a glance back at Ji-Hye who was miraculously still asleep, Tamsin was presented with the sight of all of her male flatmates collapsed across the sofas in the living area, giggling their heads of at gosh knows what.

“Guys!” she whisper-shouted.

They all turned to look at her with varying rates of success. Dae managed to find her straight away. Jeong and Ye-Jun both looked at each other, confused before they realised they had not imagined the voice and someone had entered the room, so looked across at her. Seong-Min looked at each of the guys, getting more and more confused as he realised it couldn’t have been any of them who spoke because the voice was clearly feminine, then he scanned the whole room before he managed to settle on looking at Tamsin.

“Ji-Hye is not feeling great so she needs to get plenty of sleep. That means you guys have to shut up! You guys should head to bed too, to be honest. I know at least three of you have at least one exam this week.”

Dae sobered up almost immediately, an impressive skill he had that Tamsin always attributed to him being the dad friend. “Is she okay?” he asked, concerned for their friend.

“Yeah,” Tamsin confirmed. “She just locked herself out again and caught a cold. She should be alright as long as she gets plenty of sleep.”

Thankfully, Dae then took over the herding of the others into their shared room. She went back to bed and didn’t hear from them again until well past noon the next day.

Exams came and went, Tamsin passing them all, most with flying colours, earning her groans from her flatmates who had to deal with her worrying from weeks before the exams started all the way until results came out. She started her second year of university and with that started studying Mandarin and Japanese. Her goal was still to learn as many languages as she possibly could. Occasionally, thoughts of the gorgeous giant she met that one night in February flitted through her mind. She wondered if he was getting close to debuting, and when she had these thoughts she found herself googling recently debuted groups to see if she would recognise the face she was looking for but she never recognised any of them. She did, however, get into some new bands this way.          


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Something happens in this chapter! Woo!

Rowoon did not want to get up early on this particular Saturday morning in December. He had a few reasons, the main one being that none of the Neoz guys had gone to sleep until after 3am because the Friday night was the first night they had all been free since Youngbin’s birthday on the Monday. They had just been hanging out, too tired from the week to have a proper party, but still wanting to celebrate. The night had been fun, but it meant when Youngbin woke him up at 6.30am to go to a schedule, he wasn’t all that pleased. Another reason he wasn’t terribly happy to be dragged out of bed was that not everyone was. Only himself, Zuho, Dawon, Chani and Youngbin had to go. Hwiyoung had for some reason decided he was going to come too, but that still only made six out of nine of them. Taeyang had a solo schedule that had been booked for a long time and Inseong and Jaeyoon were headed in to the company building later to do work in the studio. Rowoon had asked to go with Inseong and Jaeyoon, mainly because they weren’t planning to head in until after 9am so he could have gotten some more sleep, but Youngbin wasn’t having any of it. According to their leader, because Rowoon had been cast as one of the main characters in the drama they were filming that day, he was required to be there for filming all day every day.

This was particularly frustrating on this first day because they had been told in advance that they would be tackling only Chani’s scenes today. This was sensible because he was the only one of the main cast that was in school still. Getting as many of his scenes done on the first day of filming, a Saturday, was a good idea so he wouldn’t have to miss much, if any, school for filming later. But Rowoon was not in any scenes with Chani.

By 9am, they had been at the film set for 2 hours already, but they still hadn’t started filming yet. Chani had been made up first and now they were waiting for Mina to come out of hair and make-up so they could finally start. Rowoon had fallen asleep leaning on Zuho’s shoulder, even in the very uncomfortable chairs they had been provided to watch the filming from.

He was startled awake by an excited dolphin squeal from Hwiyoung.

“AOA are here!”

Chani corrected him at a much lower pitch, “Well, some of them anyway,” but Hwiyoung had already run off, Dawon hot on his heels and the others watched the two of them bow to the group of girls who had just left hair and make-up, introducing themselves.

Rowoon had been rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but he looked up as Youngbin and Chani greeted the girls too, having followed Hwiyoung and Dawon at a slower pace. He spotted something that made him smile brightly, remembering something pleasant.

He hadn’t realised Zuho hadn’t joined the others yet until he heard his friend’s low voice, “What’s making you look like you’re finally in a good mood this morning? That nap must have done wonders. I didn’t think you were that much of an AOA fan.”

Still smiling, Rowoon told his hyung, “Currently, they’re some of my favourite people on the planet.”

Zuho shrugged and walked over to join the others, leaving Rowoon alone and kind of stuck. He kept looking what had made him smile; one of the girls who had just entered the room. As far as he knew, it couldn’t be an AOA member. None of them had half green, half purple hair. He had only seen hair like that once before. He remembered it clearly. The hair in front of him now was even in the same hairstyle, half up in two buns, as the hair he had seen those ten months previously. If he tilted his head and squinted a little, he was pretty sure he could even see that little fly away piece sticking out on the right-hand side. He scanned her outfit, ripped jeans with dinosaur patches on, a yellow tulle top and a green dinosaur handbag. The outfit was definitely something he could see her wearing. Then he noticed the same green leather jacket she had worn last time hooked over her arm.

He hadn’t forgotten a single detail from that night. Ten months was a long time, but he still found himself taking a second glance every time he spotted anything pale green or pale purple, hoping to find the girl he had enjoyed such a short time with.

Trying to make his feet move, he thought about what he would say to her when he walked over there. All this time, he had found his mind often drifting back to her and how it would be that he would see her again, what he would say when she was standing in front of him again. Even though in that moment when she had left and he couldn’t find her on the street, he had thought he would never see each other again, since then, he had been certain that he would. He was just waiting for that time.

And now here it was.

She was there, just across the room from him. He wanted to go over, talk to her, but none of the scenarios he had imagined over the ten months since he met her fit into this situation. He had imagined meeting her in his building, surprised to discover that she lived in the same building as them, or running into her at the café, where he had found himself returning every couple of weeks hoping for such a meeting, or even just spotting her on the street. None of the conversations he had laid out in his head for the scenarios he had thought of meeting her in worked with this situation. Despite the stupid amount of time he had been planning how this moment was going to go, now he was in it, he had no clue what to do.

Youngbin must have been introducing everyone because then he turned around and looked at Rowoon. He beckoned him over, looking confused as to why he hadn’t come already. Apparently, that was the boost Rowoon needed, his legs finally moving towards the others.

When she saw Youngbin turn and beckon to someone behind her, Tamsin turned to see who else was there. Mina had said that she only expected two or three of the trainees to be there because they were only working on one track of the storyline that day. Having just been introduced to five men, she wasn’t sure how many more to expect because, clearly, Mina had been wrong.

Looking back, she saw only one other trainee, but then all thoughts were taken out of her head after, ‘Wow, he’s tall’ because then she looked at his face, and it was him. When Ji-Min had asked her if she wanted to come along to the filming of a web drama that Mina, one of her bandmates, was starring in, and Ji-Min herself was featuring in, she hadn’t considered the thought that one of the trainees they were working with would be the one she had been searching for for nearly a year. He hadn’t even crossed her mind. The offer to come to the filming had made her excited because she loved kdramas. It was the same reason that Ji-Min had asked her in the first place. When she was watching kdramas and scouring debut shows to find him, she never thought she would meet him again. The only times she had imagined meeting him again was if she had listened to him and got into the band he was in, then she would go to a fan meet one day and hope he might recognise her from that one night so long before. Even then, when she imagined meeting him, half the time he didn’t remember her, just saw her as another one of the fans, the only stand out thing about her being that she wasn’t Korean.

Her mouth dropped open and she wanted to greet him, say something, anything, but she didn’t get a chance. Instead, she was pulled away by Ji-Hye. She seemed to have a habit of separating Rowoon and Tamsin, without knowing the man even existed.

“They’re about to start,” she said as she dragged the younger girl with her over to the viewing seats where Rowoon had been napping only minutes before.

It turned out that while Tamsin had been staring at Rowoon, Chani and Mina had been called away to take their places on set, ready to finally start filming. Hwiyoung and Dawon, two of the trainees Youngbin had just introduced her to, had already taken the two seats on the ends of the two rows of chairs. Ji-Min was just in front of Ji-Hye and Tamsin. She took a place on the back row, next to Hwiyoung. Tamsin found herself being pushed to sit down next to Dawon, not that she was particularly reluctant, she was just completely out of it, still trying to get her head around the fact that Rowoon was there. Ji-Hye took the seat next to her, turning around to talk to Youngbin as soon as he took the seat behind her. Tamsin looked around for Rowoon, expecting to find him on his way over to them as well, but he was still right where she had left him, looking at her. They made awkward eye contact until she looked away, looking at the set instead. Thank goodness for Dawon starting a conversation with her then, taking her mind, or at least part of it anyway, off Rowoon for that moment.

Rowoon didn’t follow the others when they went. He was trying to figure out how he fluffed that up so badly and cursing the other girl for dragging Tamsin away at just the wrong moment. He was glaring at her for a few seconds but then he changed to looking at Tamsin again, trying to figure out how to start an actual conversation with her. Then she looked up, meeting his eye, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. Crap.

He spun on the spot, surprised once again by the fact that Zuho hadn’t followed the others and was still by his side.

“How do you know the English girl?” he asked Rowoon. When the younger man looked confused how his hyung knew that he knew her, Zuho added, “You were only looking at her, the only one not famous in that group of girls, as you approached. You must have known her before.”

Running a hand over his face, Rowoon didn’t answer the question, just groaned, “Hyung, I don’t know what to do!” After Zuho gave him a look, he did eventually answer the question, “We met ages ago when I was writing the essay for this show. I had to share a table with her in the café.” Then he took a breath. “Anyway…what do I do, Hyung?”

“What do you do about what?” Zuho asked, looking at his friend and wondering how a girl had gotten him so worked up.

Rowoon glanced across at Tamsin again, half irritated to find her talking to Dawon and laughing at something he had said. “I met her once, ten months ago. We spoke for maybe a couple of hours before she went running home because her roommate had locked herself out. How do I know she even remembers me? And if she does, why would she want to talk to me again? What if that night means a lot more to me than it does to her?”

Zuho gave him a look. “Dude, she’s a pretty girl and all, but you are Kim Rowoon. You’re a trainee going to debut in less than a year and the visual of our group of not exactly unattractive guys. If you’re making a deal out of it, I’d say there’s a good chance she is too.”

The younger man seemed to be breathing a little easier, the pep-talk having worked. “Okay, I’m not making too much out of it, but how do I talk to her? She’s sandwiched between Dawon and that other girl.”

“Shin Ji-Hye,” Zuho informed him. Seeing the other man just looking at him, Zuho clarified, “The other girl is Shin Ji-Hye, Ji-Min-sunbae’s older sister. She is also your girl Tamsin’s roommate. That’s why Tamsin is here, because she is friends with Ji-Min through knowing Ji-Hye.”

Rowoon hadn’t even thought about how Tamsin was there, his brain too preoccupied with just the fact that she was. It made sense that she knew one of the AOA members and that’s how she had been invited.

“And as for the seating arrangements, unless you want to kick Dawon out of his place, I would just leave it. You’ll get a chance to talk to her later, I’m sure. This will give you some time to think about what you are going to say to her.”

Incredibly grateful for his hyung’s advice, Rowoon led the older man over to where the others had all already taken their seats. Rowoon sat next to Ji-Hye with Zuho taking the seat behind him, next to Youngbin.


	6. Chapter 6

Through the rest of the morning, they all watched Chani and Mina act out their scenes, starting with the ones in the store room. Rowoon found his attention often grabbed, however, by the girl two seats down from him, chatting to Dawon. Most of the reason he kept looking, to be honest, was simply checking that she wasn’t a figment of his imagination, it was really her.

Tamsin talked to Dawon most of the time when they weren’t required to be silent for filming. He was funny and she was glad he was there to distract her. One awkward eye contact with Rowoon was enough for the morning. She didn’t even know if he remembered her. The way he had been staring at her before had made her think that he was trying to place her, figure out where he had seen her before. Dawon kept her eyes from drifting back to Rowoon by keeping the conversation between them flowing.

Lunch break couldn’t come soon enough for Rowoon. He was sick of watching the girl he might have a little crush on being flirted with by another member of his group while he sat idly by unable to do anything about it. He doubted that she even noticed that he was there. She had looked at him with something like recognition before, or so he thought. Maybe he had read her completely wrong and she had no clue who he was beyond one of the Neoz boys that was working with her friend.

Zuho grabbed Rowoon and pulled him aside while the others headed towards the cafeteria for lunch. He had been watching the younger member stare at Tamsin, basically ignoring the show being filmed in front of them, except to occasionally applaud Chani’s performance, Romom couldn’t not support his baby boy. Rowoon wasn’t exactly the sort to have girl trouble, being the visual giant he was, and he wasn’t exactly timid either, but this time he seemed to be struggling and Zuho wanted to help. The lunch break was a great chance to start a conversation with her, but with how he had been acting through the morning, he didn’t trust the younger man to do so. As the only member who knew what was going on with Rowoon, Zuho felt it his duty to help his dongsaeng.

On the way to the cafeteria, Tamsin was walking with Ji-Hye, Ji-Min and Mina a little ahead of them. The youngest turned to her unnie and sighed. Ji-Hye was basically an older sister to Tamsin and she needed advice. She really wanted to talk to Rowoon. Through the morning, she had been considering asking Ji-Hye to switch places with her, but she was happy chatting to Dawon and didn’t want to seem rude, moving away with seemingly no reason. Also, she had no idea what to say to Rowoon. What do you say to someone you spoke to once, for a short time, ten months ago, but haven’t been able to get fully out of your head since? Especially as she ran out on him all that time ago, with barely an explanation.

“This is screwed up!” she whispered to her unnie, not wanting any of Rowoon’s fellow members to hear what she wanted to discuss with Ji-Hye. “I met Rowoon months ago when I was working on an essay, but then I had to run out on him to save you because that was the night you locked yourself outside in the cold.”

This was the first Ji-Hye was hearing about the event at all. She had assumed Tamsin had still been hard at work in the café when she called her. Tamsin had never corrected that thought, not wanting her to feel any more guilty than she already did for having to call her for help, but now it was Tamsin’s turn to need help.

“I bet he doesn’t want to know me now because I must have offended him by running out like I did with hardly any explanation, but I was worried about you being outside on a February night. That’s if he even remembers me at all. Maybe the entire night was so insignificant to him that ten months has been plenty of time to erase it entirely from his memory.”

Ji-Hye placed her hands on Tamsin’s shoulders, stopping in the middle of the corridor, and stopping Tamsin from spiralling the way she was. The younger woman looked so distressed by the idea that she might have upset this guy she barely knew that the elder of the two guessed that she quite liked what she had seen of him so far.  “Calm down,” she told her younger friend. “Don’t worry so much about it. I’m sure he won’t be mad about you running out on him, especially if you explain the situation. I’m sorry, I would have called Seong-Min non-stop until he answered and came back to let me in if I’d known.”

Even while in mid panic about Rowoon, Tamsin couldn’t stop at least a half smile coming to her lips at that. “If you think that would have got him home any earlier than he came anyway, you’re delusional.”

Letting out a single laugh before her face went serious again, Ji-Hye said, “That may be the case, but I would rather have waited out there all night and caught a worse cold than I did than see you stressed out like this.”

The younger girl hugged her friend. “You’re the best.”

“No, you’re the best,” Ji-Hye corrected. “And that is why you shouldn’t be worried. This guy, no matter how cute he is, would be lucky to get to know you.”

Then they heard the guys coming down the corridor behind them and started moving again, wanting to sit with Ji-Min and Mina at lunch. Tamsin couldn’t help having a glance back to see if she could spot Rowoon, but there was no sign of him, and with his height, if he was there, she would have seen him easily.

When the two women entered the cafeteria, they saw that Ji-Min and Mina were sitting next to each other on the table that had been reserved for them all, food laid out at each of the 10 places at the table. This meant that Ji-Hye and Tamsin could sit next to each other opposite their friends. The guys entered just behind them, still lacking Rowoon and one of the others, after a quick scan of the group, Tamsin remembered the other missing man was the grey haired one, Zuho.

Taking their places at the table, Dawon managed to find his way to the seat next to Tamsin. She wasn’t exactly complaining. The morning sitting with him had been fun, but she had been hoping that she might sit next to Rowoon during the lunch break. She wanted to apologise properly for how she had behaved the last time they met. Even if the conversation went no further than that, it would make her feel better to get it off her chest.

Sitting there with Dawon, she found herself developing a little more guilt, this time for how distracted she was. Dawon was trying to keep her entertained, but she found her mind constantly drifting to Rowoon and how she would apologise to him. What would she do if he honestly didn’t remember her at all?

She apologised, blushing slightly, when Chani commented something that she did not catch at all. He was sitting right opposite her but she could barely concentrate on just Dawon as well as her thoughts, she was half surprised she even noticed he had said something at all. Hwiyoung was sitting next to Chani and let out a little giggle, hiding his mouth behind his hands as Chani repeated what he had said.

After that, Youngbin chatted to Hwiyoung, Chani and Mina seemed to be getting along well after a morning of filming their love story, and Ji-Hye and Ji-Min were catching up after Ji-Min had been out of the country for a few weeks previously. This meant that, thankfully, Tamsin now only had to focus on Dawon. This was manageable, until the last two trainees entered the cafeteria.

Zuho entered first, drawing Tamsin’s eyes away from Dawon’s Bruce Lee impression, and then he realised a flaw in his brilliant plan. As Rowoon entered behind him, the older man was scanning the table, figuring out what to do to get Rowoon close enough to Tamsin to use the conversation starters he had spent the last ten minutes feeding him. The plan had been to give Rowoon a starting point to make it easier to talk to the gorgeous English girl. The plan had not taken into account that the time used creating the plan would mean they were the last to enter the room and therefore had little to no control of the table layout.

“Dawon-hyung,” he called out. “Come over here a sec?”

Still staying in character with his Bruce Lee impression, Dawon turned around to look at the men by the door. “What?”

“Come here,” Zuho repeated, making it less of a request this time.

Eventually, Dawon excused himself from Tamsin to go over to his dongsaengs. As soon as he was standing, Zuho whispered to Rowoon for him to go take Dawon’s place. When Dawon reached Zuho, he was glaring at him, trying to figure out why they had set him up to lose his spot.

“You need to stop hogging the pretty English girl, Hyung.”

In typical Dawon style, his mouth dropped open in outrage. “I’m not hogging her! She finds me funny, I can’t help that.”

Zuho just rolled his eyes and took the empty seat at the table next to Youngbin, who was watching what was going on with interest. Watching Dawon make Chani and Hwiyoung move up on the table so he could sit in between Mina and Chani, opposite his old place, with Tamsin to a diagonal from him, Zuho rolled his eyes again. The maknaes knew, like all of them did, how Dawon hated being on the outside of a group, so there was no point in fighting him on it. Youngbin figured from what he had seen that Zuho and Rowoon were up to something, so he suggested Zuho take his place so the co-conspirators could sit together.

As Rowoon took the place just vacated by Dawon, he started the conversation simply, “Tamsin?”

Her eyes had been following the mopey Dawon taking his new place on the table, shoving the maknaes out of the way, so she hadn’t noticed how close Rowoon was getting to her. When she heard his voice say her name, she gasped slightly, rather surprised that he even remembered it. He hadn’t been there when Ji-Hye had introduced her to the others. Maybe one of the others had told him her name again, that must have been it.

When she didn’t reply, he found himself already straying from Zuho’s suggested topics as he took the seat next to her, her eyes following him as he did. “I can’t believe it’s really you. Annyeong.”

“Annyeong,” she repeated back, politely, and almost entirely automatically.

After a couple of seconds of silence between the two, so caught up in each other that they barely even noticed Dawon’s loud complaining about losing his spot until Mina asked him to show her the impression he had been trying to show Tamsin, the two opened their mouths simultaneously. They both started, “I’m sorry…” before stopping in unison as well.

Rowoon motioned for her to go first.

“I was going to say, I’m sorry I ran out so fast that night. I would have gladly stayed for hours more, but Ji-Hye was locked out of the building and she never wears warm clothing at home so she would have frozen to death if I didn’t go help her. All of our other dormmates were on a night out and didn’t get back until after 4am.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her rambling. “I was going to say, I’m sorry I didn’t get your number at the beginning of the night as the end was so rushed.”

That had been nowhere near what he had actually been about to say. He had been about to go on a ramble almost as bad as hers. Something about watching her being nervous, however, eradicated his own nerves, bringing out the confident Rowoon who was much more standard than the nervous mess that had been threatening to come out. Now that his confidence was back, he was going to use it to the best of his ability. “So I was wondering if I could get it now?”          


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no real idea how to work this website, sorry, so the fake texts I created for this chapter, showing the conversation between Tamsin and her flatmates, are on [Tumblr](https://sleepyfantasy.tumblr.com/post/166022942216/smiling-with-teeth-chapter-seven-and-a-half-these).

She blushed, hard.

The smile on his face grew.

Reaching into her dinosaur bag, she pulled out a phone with a purple case on it. As she typed her pass code in, he saw that it had a picture of a sea monster on it and it said something in English. He knew most of the words but didn’t understand it.  

Once she was on a blank contact page, she passed her phone to Rowoon. She watched him, while trying not to watch him, but she didn’t notice the dilemma that was going on in his head. Having left the page entirely blank, he had to come up with what to put his contact name as. He was tempted to briefly snoop through her phone, just to see what her other contacts were like. He didn’t want to put something silly and then find all of her other contacts were just surname-given name. Or vice versa. Then it crossed his mind that all of her contacts were probably in the roman alphabet, not hangul. Taking a quick but deep breath, he used his newly rediscovered confidence to decide what to write, without snooping through her phone. He did, however, use it to text himself a winky face, giving him her number. He didn’t feel too guilty about that, though, because he had asked for her number in the first place.

He was about to hand the phone back to her, she was holding her hand out ready to take it and everything, but he held onto it a little longer. Holding it up, the back facing her, he asked, “What’s this?”

Confused, it took her a second to realise he was talking about her phone case. It was a present she was given one year by her colleagues on an internship she did in Scotland. “It’s the Loch Ness Monster,” she explained. “Nessie is a mythical beast said to roam Loch Ness in Scotland. The writing says, ‘What matters is I believe in myself’ which is a joke because very few people actually believe that the Loch Ness Monster exists.”

The handsome young man cocked his head to the side, clearly not fully understanding the joke, but he had a smile on his face at the redness on hers. She stuffed a mouthful of noodles in her mouth to get out of having to say anything and that only made him smile more.

Having finished showing his impression to Mina, or rather, having been informed by Chani that he was finished showing his impression to Mina with a long whine of, “Hyung…”, Dawon had turned his attention back to Rowoon and Tamsin. He knew he was missing something here, some information that explained why Zuho had gotten involved like he did. Normally Zuho was happy on the outside of a group, joining in when he wanted to, but equally ignored when he wanted to be. There must have been a reason that he forced himself into this situation. The detective Dawon was distracted, however, by Chani, who had finished his own lunch by this point, sneaking a bite of Dawon’s. Speculating could wait when he had a maknae to fight.

Rowoon and Tamsin sat eating together in silence for a little while, not sure what to say to each other. They would glance across at each other at intervals, however, and more often than not, when they did, they caught each other’s eyes. Of course, as soon as their eyes met, they both looked away, going back to concentrating on the food for the next few seconds at least.

Finally, Rowoon remembered one of the conversation starting sentences he had been told by Zuho. “So, how’s university going?”

And she was off…

If only Rowoon had known it was this easy to bring Tamsin out of her shell. She told him all about her different modules she was working on at the moment and how the new languages she was learning were going. He didn’t understand half of it as she spoke about interesting vocabulary in at least three different languages and used technical Korean language to described specific linguistic devices, but he found he didn’t need to understand it. He was almost certainly enjoying the conversation, much more than he would have done from just understanding what was being said, by watching her. She lit up when she spoke about what she loved. The smile never left her face the whole time she was explaining complex devices used in Russian poetry, or how the Japanese alphabet worked, or any of the other stuff that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend and especially not at the speed she was gushing about it.

When the lunch break was over, the director sent a runner to call Chani and Mina back into the set. As they all followed the young man he took them to a different room than they had been in before.

They moved around a lot that afternoon, Chani and Mina filming several different scenes around the lot. Zuho was called on to join in a couple of times to start filming a bit of his story line, especially the parts where he was in shot with Chani.

No matter where they went all afternoon, Rowoon and Tamsin were next to each other. Now that Rowoon had gotten conversation flowing with his question about her course, they freely talked about many other things as well. They talked mostly about nonsense things, not about anything serious, or really much about themselves. They talked about what bands they liked, discovering Rowoon’s love of FTIsland and Tamsin’s love of BTS, and several other bands and dramas and the like. No one else got a word in edge-ways to either of them all afternoon. 

At one point, they were all sitting in two rows of seats, similar to the morning set up but in front of a different set, except this time Rowoon and Tamsin were sitting next to each other on the front row. Dawon had fought his way to the seat on the other side of Tamsin and was trying to get her attention to no avail. Tamsin’s phone started buzzing in her pocket every couple of minutes. She knew from experience, this was her flat group chat.

She looked behind her at Ji-Hye who was showing something on her phone to her sister and giggling slightly. That made Tamsin wonder what they were finding so funny, so she got her phone out to check. She found that their other flatmates had been checking up on them. Or, more accurately, Seong-Min wanted to know how hot they were.

As she scrolled down through the new messages, however, she saw Ji-Hye was telling them that the trainees were ‘all over’ her, followed by some of the others, mainly Dae-Hyun, worrying about the them ‘getting too close to her’. She was going to indignantly type a reply to that immediately, but she decided to look through the rest of the messages, knowing her friends too well to think there wouldn’t be more to complain about.

And she was right. When Seong-Min had asked if there was anyone he might like there, Ji-Hye had been fast to pass him Youngbin as an idea, even managing to sneak a picture of him as he was sitting just to her right. Seong-Min was then asking where the studio was so that he could come and meet Youngbin. That was the most recent message. Time for Tamsin to step in. She told them that no one was getting too close to her and also told Seong-Min to stay where he was and leave the trainees alone.

Ji-Hye didn’t leave it at that, however. She made reference to the ‘tol bean’ on Tamsin’s right being particularly interested in her and when Seong-Min asked for a picture of him, she devised a plan. Or rather, she on the spot thought of the first step of a plan. She certainly did not think the whole thing through.

She got Ji-Min to say, “Hey Rowoon…” to get him to turn around and then she snapped a picture of him on her phone completely unsubtly. Then, when Ji-Min panicked, not knowing how to explain wanting Rowoon’s attention or how to distract him from her older sister’s antics, Ji-Hye grabbed her younger sister’s hand and pulled her away to the ladies’ room down the corridor, far away from all of the trainees they had just embarrassed themselves in front of.

Rowoon turned to Tamsin, a confused expression on his face, as he tried to figure out what had just happened. “Wae?”

Tamsin just shrugged, the only explanation she could give, “Ji-Hye unnie is a bit weird, but I love her anyway.”

After Ji-Hye was back and after a brief detour into a conversation about Rowoon’s height, Tamsin managed to stop the activity in the group chat by telling them she felt rude being on her phone while she was with the trainees. This was partially true. Another contributing factor was that typing was taking away from her time talking to Rowoon.

Once that was over, Ji-Hye went back to quietly watching the filming, making comments to Ji-Min and Youngbin when there was a pause between takes. This meant that Tamsin could get back to concentrating on Rowoon. She did also watch the filming. It looked really good, and she was enjoying it even more now that Zuho was doing some scenes too so she got more of an idea about what the drama was going to be like. She couldn’t wait for it to come out, especially so she could see Rowoon’s storyline.

Now that they were back to concentrating mainly on each other, for the two of them it was like no time had passed at all, even though by the time they were dragged out of their own little world by the director calling a wrap for the day, it was after seven in the evening. Their friends were all desperate to get out of there after being there all day.

“Let’s go get food,” Ji-Hye said, physically dragging Tamsin away from Rowoon in desperation to leave the studio. It had been a fun day, but a long one. “The guys have ordered food to the flat and they have enough for the four of us as well.”

As Tamsin was being dragged by her unnie, Rowoon’s dongsaengs came for him. Chani and Hwiyoung both came over. “Hyung,” Chani started, “Youngbin-hyung says we can get chicken on the way back to the dorm and you know my favourite chicken place closes soon. We need to get going.”

At pretty much the same time, the two said to their respective friends, “Just give me a second.”

They broke away from the friends dragging them apart, in front of each other once again.

“You’re not allowed to just disappear off the face of the earth this time,” Rowoon told her. “You have to text me. And answer when I text you.”

She nodded.

Her head was full of images of him pulling her into his arms just then, not for anything too racy, she just really wanted him to hug her. She stayed back, though, because she was unaware of the fact that at that moment, his arms were itching to wrap her up. They each settled for a little wave instead as they were finally dragged in opposite directions by their friends.

To be perfectly honest, Tamsin half expected Rowoon to text her that night. She was a little disappointed when he didn’t. However, she was too awkward to text him first. No matter how much he told her that he wanted to keep talking to her, she couldn’t stop the voice in the back of her head telling her that he was just being polite. Why on earth would someone that beautiful and sweet and funny want to spend any more time than he absolutely had to with her?


End file.
